OpenAI opens ChatGPT ads to sponsored sales agents, with a…

Sponsored Agents entered testing September 16, letting advertisers turn a ChatGPT ad into a labeled sales conversation. TestingCatalog code references suggest a hosted agent runtime could follow at DevDay on September 29.

On September 16, OpenAI began testing Sponsored Agents, an ad format in which a ChatGPT ad opens not a landing page but a labeled conversation with a business-run bot inside the chat itself. Access is limited to select US advertisers, and the format arrives with the inevitability of a company that has already discovered its next revenue surface and is now naming it.

Per an OpenAI blog post quoted by PYMNTS: “After seeing a relevant ad, a user can choose to start a clearly labeled conversation with a business-sponsored agent in ChatGPT. The user can explain what matters to them, ask follow-up questions and follow a link to the business’s website when they’re ready to take the next step.” OpenAI adds that these agent sessions are “distinct from ChatGPT’s independent answers and separate from the original conversation.” The Register, describing the mechanic as a chatbot embedded in ChatGPT rather than on the advertiser’s site, illustrated it with a meal-kit agent that surfaces the fastest weeknight kit after a user asks for a recipe.

The rest of the September 16 package matters as much as the headline. Per an advertiser email reproduced by Search Engine Roundtable, OpenAI’s Ads Manager now offers AI-assisted copy and imagery, a Shopify App Store integration for US merchants, a HubSpot connector for creating ads and following up on leads, impression billing tied to conversion optimization, and 7-, 14- or 30-day attribution windows. This is a full-stack performance-advertising release, not a demo.

The revenue context sharpens the story. On August 31, OpenAI disclosed that ChatGPT Ads had hit a $1 billion annualized run rate. The pressure to convert that surface into higher-margin agentic commerce isn’t subtle.

A sequel is already loaded. Runtime Wire, citing TestingCatalog, reported on September 7 that OpenAI’s codebase contains references to a managed agent service with configurable environments, skills, plugins and deployment controls, and to an ad flow matching the Sponsored Agents pattern. Whether the runtime is OpenAI-hosted is unconfirmed until DevDay on September 29 at Fort Mason, which Sam Altman flagged on X with six ship emojis. Forbes contributor Jon Markman covered the setup on September 21.

The IAB recently reported that reaching AI-assisted buyers is marketers’ top challenge. Sponsored Agents is the ad system built for the buyer that survey described.

OpenAI opens ChatGPT ads to sponsored sales agents, with a managed runtime cued up for DevDay

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